Yes, yes, I know. I know. I do. I have plenty to say that isn't being said, that you might not get a chance to hear elsewhere, I suspect you might even listen to what I have to say. I know. I'm doing it anyway.
Terrorism is warfare. It's a different kind of warfare to the safe, clean, press a button, kill the foriners, war that we've seen on television. Terrorism can't be fought with conventional means - after 25 years of terrorism in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain, there's still a possibility of terrorist attack. Terrorism in any form can strike anywhere. There is no safe enemy like Communism, Russia, Cuba, China, North Vietnam, or even like Iraq, these enemies of the past, for whom it was easy to arouse vitriol and bigotry amongst the American public, and let it spread throughout the rest of the Western world. Even these supposed Rogue Nations - Libya, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, whoever else happens to be on the bad list - can no longer be the targets of American (and then worldwide) wrath, both shouty and bomby. You won't 'get' the right people if you just bomb a country, or even certain strategic bases, or whatever you choose to call it. These are small guerrilla armies that can hide. Anyone can be a terrorist, anyone can make themselves heard if they have the will to do so. Terrorism can strike anywhere, any time, from anyone, from anywhere, for any reason. A successful war against terrorism is not one of bombs, of violence, but one of prevention, of knowledge. Terrorism has to be fought with knowledge, with surveillance and intelligence. Now do that without infringing on people's civil liberties.
The dream cure for terrorism is a world in which people feel they have no need to turn to violence to solve their problems. Everyone treated justly, everyone certain that their valid viewpoint will receive a fair hearing, everyone allowed to live as choose. World peace, love for humanity, tolerance of differing ways of life. I'm young; I'm allowed hope. You can't just click your fingers and have world peace though; if it were to happen, it's a slow, gradual process that is moved towards without even realising, then one day people wake up and think "Gosh. We have world peace. How'd that happen?" How it happens is by not withdrawing from global politics, from not pleading isolationism when things look less than rosy for you just because you're the big big country and you think you can do what you want. I'm certainly not blaming America, or even George Wendy Bush, for terrorism, for lack of world peace; we are a community, a society, a world, we must all take responsibility if the world in which we live is not up to scratch. America led by George think isolationism is their best bet. Karl Jaspers, metaphysical guilt: "There exists among men, because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice, for every wrong committed in the world..." In practical terms this means increasing the potency of the United Nations, setting up a suitable universal court of justice, and perhaps most tellingly, increasing the understanding amongst the people of this world that we are people of a world, and not different people of different nations. That's the dream. I don't know how it can actually be achieved other than just gradually moving towards the right direction. That's the dream.
When people ask "Why?" as they see the explosions repeated and repeated on their televisions at 6, 9, 10, with in depth analysis on Newsnight at 10:30, and throughout the night on BBC News 24, their cries are rhetorical. They shouldn't be asking "Why?" they should be asking "Why?" What are the motives for this, these, horrific acts of terrorism, whether those that unfolded on Tuesday in America, those that go on every day in those confusing tangled messes in Israel, in Chechnya, in... well, where ARE people fighting right now?... or those that are trying to be put firmly in the past in Northern Ireland, in Spain? People wouldn't resort to terrorism unless it could offer them something, offer their struggle something. Terrorist acts are not senseless acts of wanton violence, they are violent acts that are deemed necessary by those undertaking them. Eliminate the motive and you eliminate the terrorists; eliminate the terrorists and motive remains, breeding new terrorists. Spain, Northern Ireland, these are easily comprehended motives: these are people who feel their countries have been taken over by oppressors, and that the only way in which they can beat a physically stronger oppressor is through guerrilla tactics, or in the case of loyalist terrorists in Northern Ireland, these are people who see terrorism possibly succeeding in breaking up 'their' country, and they feel the only way they can fight terrorism is with terrorism. Israel is similar, in that it's people fighting on both sides, through terrorist means, in order that their country, their way of life, whichever side they're on, is allowed to exist. They, the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Republicans, the Loyalists, the Basque Separatists, the terrorists, don't trust the other side to treat them, their people, their families, fairly, to allow them to exist as they wish to exist. In the dream world of pure justice, this wouldn't be an issue. This isn't a dream world. This is an issue.
It goes further. Arab terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists, Arab terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists, Arab terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists. Drilled into you. Explosion. "Arab terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists," you think. Motives here? Yankee infidel oppressors. We live in a world that's increasingly becoming westernised. There is no great meeting of cultures, there is no east meets west, except in the east. The west heads west, dragging the east with it. When culture, when heritage, when life becomes tied up with religion, with beliefs, with the meaning of life, some see opposition as the only option for preservation. Some see violent opposition as the only option. With every terrorist attack there are two tragedies: the act itself, the death, the destruction, and the existence of a motive, the belief that the act was necessary.
We, the west, we fear Arabic, Muslim countries, out of ignorance, out of lack of understanding. We are racist. Don't dismiss this racism as a knee jerk reaction to violent death live on TV. Wait. Forget. Speak to people about Islam, about Arabic countries, about any country in the world. People, including those who would go so far as to tell you they're not racist, are racist. These aren't nigger-hating lynch mobs, or even people dancing in the streets burning American flags (these are the racists that the non-racist racists we're talking about will sneer at), this is in many ways a more dangerous form of racism because it's a racism that people don't think is racism, that can't really be dealt with, it's stealthy, it's subversive, it's all-pervading, it gets in your hair, in your nose, in your lungs. People don't even realise it's there. It spreads. This is not just the easy "America hates Islam" spiel that journalists get some Arabic spokesman to spout when travesty has been repeated enough and analysis starts, this is "Everyone is racist". You don't want to be racist? You don't think you are? Look deeply at yourself. Look deeply at others. Think. Think properly. People are people. Go beyond what you think now, go beyond, look deeper. Think. Only thought, tolerance, understanding, knowledge will get these last dregs of racism from the subconscious recesses of existence. And if there's racism one way, it comes right back the other way, and up, and up, and up.
Whoomph. Tim did it. Motive? "He was a right wing extremist." Yes. Ok. Motive? "He was a right wing extremist." Yes. Ok. Motive? "He was a right wing extremist." Motive? I don't know. We think Arab terrorists, Islamic fundamentalism. We discover nuh uh, guy next door (guy next door to America; America=the world; guy next door). Did we ever find out motive? I don't know. It shows the racism though, it also shows that terrorism isn't necessarily a state-sponsored act, but that it can come from anywhere. Whoomph. Theodore did it. Motive? "Some anti-technology Luddite thing." Ah. Ok. Anywhere.
Anywhere. We have newish anti-terrorist laws in this country (this country that's not America). Beautiful Big Issue tells me anyone's a terrorist, an eco-protestor, someone opposed to global capitalism, all those shouty shouty protesty people. Beautiful Big Issue tells me civil liberties are infringed. The right to peaceful protest is being squeezed on the off chance that violence erupts. Did that RIP bill pass? Are we being monitored? Will this stop these anyone anywhere terrorists, these cyber terrorists with their viruses and nasty colds? Will America do likewise? I dunno. I don't. I know, know, that always in the aftermath people scream that anything that can be done to prevent this happening again must be done. Complete security is impossible. Near complete security is impractical, both because it will cost governments, airlines, everyone, too much. There is a price, there is. It also costs too much in time, in delays, in intrusions into the innocent lives of ordinary people. There is a price. The answer is a balance. The hope is that this balance is a steady one, the right one, and not a balance that careens from one knee jerk reaction over explosions to another over invasions into the lives of the innocent. Where it is, I don't know. I still hold on to my dream blindly.
Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. Xanana Gusmao was a terrorist. Che Guevara was a terrorist. Some say terrorist, some say guerrilla, some say freedom fighter. Treason is only a matter of dates, history is written by the winners. If terrorism is defined as an organised system of violence and intimidation, especially for political ends, then any government that went to war is a terrorist organisation. For the most part the perceived definition of terrorism is applied to a minority, a minority who feels oppressed, and who feels that terrorism is their only recourse against the larger group. Very few people think violence is never the answer. Terrorists, freedom fighters, guerrillas do what they believe to be the right thing to do. People who joined the fight against Hitler, North Vietnam, Argentina, Saddam, Jews, South Vietnam, England, America, did what they believed to be the right thing to do. You tell me, when are they fighting for truth and justice and when are they fighting truth and justice? Is it just when they disagree with you? Are some people just wrong and some just right? Is it perhaps the far more clinical line that if you kill innocent civilians you're automatically bad, and the rest doesn't matter? Always right America killed civilians - whoomph, it's a Cruise missile. Always wrong terrorists killed civilians, we know this. Nelson tried not to kill civilians. People still died though. It would be nice to think that if people felt violence was their only answer they would only direct it against the relevant people, but it's just not going to happen. Guildford pub bombing: a 'soldier's' pub, supposedly not innocent. They were really. Soldiers aren't the ones deciding policy. They can choose not to be soldiers in a country without conscription, without National Service, but they don't decide to be soldiers in order to oppress; hopefully they join because they feel they can help defend. Terrorists kill civilians, go for famous targets, because these get attention, make people listen, demand airtime, bring them to the negotiating table. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, civilians. No-one's innocent. It's always sad.
"We don't negotiate with terrorists." Yes you do. Or you will, eventually. Don't be dogmatic, it just won't help. Make sure when you negotiate, you get a proper answer. You find your solution. You get peace. Make it a proper answer, eliminate motive and you'll eliminate provisional, continuity, terrorist groups. You work hard. You talk. You listen. You all work together. All of you, all of us. Everywhere.
And so to the present day. People are calling this the end of the world as they know it, people are saying it's Pearl Harbor, people are saying it's World War III, people are hating. Step back. Think. Listen. Learn. Understand. America, this is what the rest of the world lives with. I have an uncle in Washington; around him everyone was frightened, people were panicking. He has limited experience of terrorism from London. He works with someone from the West Bank. Americans panicked. They watched. An American on the news post-trauma screamed out that there was a plane overhead. It was just a US Air Force plane patrolling. Americans are feeling the fear that East Timorese civilians felt as British-made Hawk jets flew overhead, that Iraqi civilians feel when American planes patrol. America fears attack, America knows it can be attacked, like people around the world know they can be attacked, often by America. People are dying every week in terrorist attacks around the world. People are dying in wars around the world. Welcome to America. Loss of life is always sad, always. Why is this so much sadder, so much more newsworthy than the terrorist attacks, the deaths around the world? The scale? The numbers? Because we watched it live on TV? Because it's America? Over 1000 people died in a cult death in Uganda a year or so ago. Remember that? It's not terrorism, but it's death, death on a huge scale. Remember that? How many suicide bombers on buses have we sort of maybe heard about in passing in that weird little Middle East place? How many people are dying, have died in wars? Around 1000 people are murdered on the streets of New York every year. Around 500,000 Americans die of cancer each year. All deaths are sad. Mourn everyone. Mourn those you don't get to hear about because they're not newsworthy, mourn those who you see repeated and repeated and repeated. Mourn everyone.
The cure for terrorism is elimination of motive. That comes from everyone. Baying for blood, baying for retaliation, baying for missiles, these don't make any difference. Change yourself. Move in the right direction. Elect leaders who move in the right direction.